The Pyramid by William Golding Page B

the book back in the tray, went past the Jolly Tea Rooms where six college wives were eating buns, drinking coffee and clacking, past Douglas Fairbanks outside what had been the Corn Exchange and stood, looking down the rest of the High Street at the Old Bridge. There was nothing to worry about. From the High Street, anyone—any pair—against the further pier would be completely hidden. I was safe.
    Mrs. Babbacombe came up the other side of the High Street, carrying a string bag full of packets and paper bags. She was wearing her usual grey suit, usual grey cloche. An enormous artificial pearl hung on her left ear. She came up wizened and smiling, with an unacknowledged greeting to this person and that. Then she saw me. She did not alter her brisk walk; but her head sank sideways, inclined, her false teeth dazzled. She held that bow, that smile, for a good five yards, till a man by a lamp post hid her.
    Knowledge poured into me. Awe-stricken, I realized exactly how perilous my lust was. I knew something else, too. Neither Sergeant Babbacombe nor his wife could have my mother’s flashes of diabolical perception. This was Evie’s doing. She had used me as a lightning conductor. More accurately and unconsciously than I ever played any scale, I raced over in my mind the realities of people. Evie could never have Robert for keeps. She could not even catch him. If she tried, she would come up against a cliff of adamant. But since she liked his motor bike and had paid for her rides—yes, paid for them!—she needed excuses for lateness, for staying out, for—My cliff was as adamant as the Ewans’s; but not as high. No, not nearly as high. It was not as high, for example, as the cliff that separated Evie herself, from the louts who hung round the Town Hall, out of work. For Evie, I was a lightning conductor. To her parents I was a possible suitor. Bellicose Sergeant Babbacombe must have been twisted by those white fingers, persuaded by that tinkling voice that we were courting. I put my hair up out of my eyes and took a deep breath. Apart from my terror at her parents’ assumptions , I was lost in conjectures as to how Evie had used me. Was it I, for example, who had kept her out after twelve—I who had pinched Bounce’s car, even? And what else? What other strings did Evie have to her trim little bow? I assumed without thinking, that she would lie when necessary, as I lied myself when necessary. In that case, driven by necessity, she might say anything. I saw as in a nightmare, Sergeant Babbacombe turn up on our door step, twisting his three-cornered hat in his hands, and demand of my father to know what my intentions were. I knew what my intentions were, and so did Evie; but they were too neatly describable for family life. I went home, round the other side of the Town Hall, and played the piano very softly.
    *
    That evening the news of Robert was mixed. The only thing that was certain was that he would be in hospital a long time. I went out early to the bridge, thinking to myself that if I were seen sitting there often enough, no one would notice or at any rate, comment, on my meetings with Evie. It was twilight again before she appeared, pacing down the street. She came up to me with no more than a ghost of her smile.
    “Weren’t you hurt at all?”
    Her smile became brighter, and a bit arch.
    “What d’you mean Olly? What you talking about?”
    “Last night.”
    “I wasn’t—”
    “I saw you, Evie. On the bike.”
    She shuddered suddenly, drawing up her shoulders.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “Goose walked over my grave I ’xpect. Olly—”
    “Well?”
    She glanced sideways at the street.
    “You won’t tell, will you?”
    “Why should I?”
    She smiled at me nicely and let out a long breath.
    “Thanks.”
    I laughed with fierce sarcasm.
    “Oh yes! You were here with me on the bridge, weren’t you? We talked about music, didn’t we? We went down there by the water, fishing for tiddlers. Didn’t you